


i'm strung out like words, an open book for you to read

by katsumi



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, F/M, No Spoilers, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10865535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: He shouldn’t keep talking to her. He's got a job to do tonight, and he needs to focus, relax. He shouldn’t draw attention to himself, but he can’t help it. When she smiles, Wolfgang feels his whole body thrum alive.Wolfgang meets a girl on a train.





	i'm strung out like words, an open book for you to read

**Author's Note:**

> I was quasi-playing with the idea of this being a full-on soulmate AU, but I thought it seemed more fun (and more true to the nature of the show) to leave the details of their connection vague.

“Excuse me. Is this seat taken?”

Wolfgang startles, sees the woman peeking in through the sliding door of the compartment. Dark skin, bright eyes, periwinkle sundress; her shoes probably cost more than all the clothes on his body.

She’s smiling, cautiously optimistic, worrying her lower lip in a way that makes Wolfgang’s chest feel tight for reasons he can’t explain.

“No,” he says, shifting closer to the window. The gun tucked beneath his waistband presses cool against his lower back. “No, there’s room.”

Relief spreads across her face, fast and dizzying. “Oh, thank you.” She slips into the compartment, lugging a black and white striped suitcase behind her. “I was in a different compartment, but a man—” She makes a face, a quirk of her lips that makes Wolfgang want to laugh. “A man I would prefer not to spend more time with decided he would join me.”

She smooths her skirt before sitting on the bench opposite him, brushing her hair behind her ears. And even though there’s no good reason for it—even though letting her in was arguably enough of a mistake—he leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees.

“You’d rather spend time with me?”

She bristles, and he’s ready to take it back: to promise to pass the rest of the ride in silence. But then her eyes narrow and she looks him up and down, slow, with calculated scrutiny. Like she’s trying to decode him.

“You were not my first choice,” she says, meeting his eye once more.

“Harsh.”

“Honest,” she corrects. “I am traveling alone in a foreign country. I would have preferred to sit with a woman. But yours seems to be the only compartment left with room to sit.”

“That’s fair," he says. Which it is. But even to tell him this—that she’s alone, that she's concerned—feels like a risk on her part. Even though her accent suggests she’s not from France—her use of English as well—still, it feels like she’s drawing needless attention to her own vulnerabilities. Maybe she’s not as used to self-preservation as he is.

Or maybe, he thinks, with a thump of his heart, she has scanned him, mentally broken him down to his base elements. Maybe she’s approved of what she’s seen.

He stretches out his palm. “I’ll try to be a good seatmate, then. I’m Wolfgang.”

She hesitates for a moment, just long enough for Wolfgang to think _fuck, this was a mistake._ But then she slips her hand into his, firm, and that alone is enough to shoot electricity up his spine.

“Kala.”

He shouldn’t keep talking to her. He's got a job to do tonight, and he needs to focus, relax. He shouldn’t draw attention to himself, but he can’t help it. When she smiles, Wolfgang feels his whole body thrum alive.

She’s from Bombay, he learns, in Europe on holiday with her family. They’d flown into Frankfurt and her sister was to come with her to Paris for the weekend, but she got sick at the last minute and couldn’t make the trip.

“So you left without her,” Wolfgang translates.

“She insisted!” says Kala, with wide-eyed affront. “I wouldn’t have gone if she hadn’t told me to.”

“No, I mean—” He chuckles. “Good for you. Traveling alone.”

“I’m not—”

She cuts herself off, and Wolfgang wonders if she were about to say, _I’m not alone_.

“I wasn’t about to miss Paris,” Kala says instead, gaze flicking to the scenery rushing past the window.

“Of course not,” says Wolfgang, watching the way she leans her palm against her cheek, taking in the delicate curve of her neck, the warmth in her eyes. “Paris is beautiful.”

He tells her he’s a locksmith from Berlin, heading to France to visit a friend. He tells her about Felix, waiting for him back home, about their cluttered shop, about the glittery sprawl of the Berlin skyline.

Of course, some things he omits. Things like the gun pressing up against his spine, the rounds of ammo shoved into the lining of his bag. The fact that the “friend” he’s visiting isn’t so much a friend as an extortionist piece of shit gangster who’s decided he won’t leave Felix the fuck alone.

These aren’t things she needs to know. For a while, he can sit with her and pretend: that he’s just a guy on a train, talking with someone special. Starting something new.

All too soon, they’re pulling into Paris’ Gare du Nord, and Wolfgang thinks he sees disappointment in her face that mirrors his own.

“How long are you in town?” she asks, smoothing the folds of her skirt.

“I leave tomorrow.”

He doesn’t say _, if I don’t die tonight_.

She looks up at him, and he sees her hesitate, twitch, like she’s about to reach for his hand. But that’s probably just wishful thinking.

“Good luck,” she whispers, sounding so grave that he almost wonders if he told her what he was about to do after all.

Something compels him to reach forward, to pull one of her hands from her lap and slide his fingers through hers.

“You too.”

He’s not sure what he’s wishing her luck for, exactly, but the way she smiles, shoulders slumped, suggests she needs it as much as he does.

He doesn’t let go of her hand. And for a long, long while, she doesn’t, either.

When eventually they make their way off the train, there’s a man standing on the platform: tall, Indian, with an expensive wristwatch and a wide, toothy smile. He waves in their direction, and it’s immediately clear: Kala was lying to him just as he was to her. This must be the real reason she’s in the city.

Wolfgang ducks his head, preparing to peel out into the crowd. He can’t imagine she’d want him to stick around and meet her, what, boyfriend? But her hand latches around his wrist, stops him. He turns back to her and she drops his wrist, fast, glancing over his shoulder.

“Dandekar,” she says. “My full name is Kala Dandekar.”

Wolfgang feels the grin start to tug at his cheeks. It’s not much—not a phone number, an address—but she’s told him where she works, the city she lives in. It’s something. It’s enough.

“Okay.”

Kala lifts an eyebrow. “You aren’t going to tell me your name?”

She sounds so offended. It takes every ounce of his energy not to pull her towards him, slide his hand through her hair, and—

“No.” He’s fully smiling, now. He can’t stop. “No, I’m not.”

She wrinkles her nose. “But—”

“I’ll see you around, Kala.”

He turns away before he does something stupid, like ask her to come with him.

 

* * *

 

Three men die that night, two by Wolfgang’s gun, one by his fist. Bad men, all of them: threats not just to Wolfgang and Felix, not just to his city, but to the entire fucking human race. It’s the right thing to do, to put a stop to this bullshit here, now. To be proactive, kill before being killed.

That doesn’t make it easy. But Wolfgang’s never had the luxury of easy; he’s not expecting that to change any time soon.

So it’s more than a little bit of a surprise when he rounds a corner in the early morning hours and there’s Kala: standing on a bridge, looking out over the water, haloed in moonlight. He nearly stops breathing.

He’s walking towards her without even realizing he’s doing it.

“You’re out late.”

She turns, and he doesn’t miss the delight on her face that quickly falls as she takes him in: the blood on his lip, the tear at his jacket.

“You’re hurt.”

“Not badly.”

But she’s moving for him anyway, curving her palm around his cheek, brushing strands of sweaty hair from his forehead. Her fingers push up against a cut he didn’t even realize he had, and when he winces, she grips him tighter.

“I knew something was wrong,” she says, frantic. “I knew it.”

He laughs. “How?”

She bites her lip. She looks at him like she’s searching for something.

“I’m not sure. I just...knew.”

He thinks he understands. Tentatively, he lets his palm rest against the small of her back. The breath she takes at the touch is laced with something darker than just surprise.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“I’m not the one bleeding.”

He shrugs as if to say, _that’s irrelevant._

“I’m...confused,” she allows. He can feel her breath against his skin.

“About your man?”

Her eyes flick back up to the cut on his forehead, and she steps closer, as though to inspect it. But he knows it’s an act: she just doesn’t want to look him in the eye.

“Rajan is not my man,” she says.

“But he wants to be.”

“Yes,” she allows, quiet. “He wants to be.”

“And you?” He slides his hand a little lower, just a hair. “What do you want?”

She lets out a shaky breath. “You know, I’m not sure anyone’s really asked me that before.”

_I would_ , Wolfgang thinks, unbidden. _I would ask you every day_.

Slowly, Kala swipes her thumb at the blood on his lower lip, and he lets his eyes fall closed, sinking into her touch. Then her thumb falls away, and the next thing he feels is her lips—soft, feather-light on his.

He can’t help it. He yanks her closer, opens his mouth under hers. And when she responds in kind—nails sharp against his neck, wet tongue on his lips—he almost loses his footing. Nothing’s ever felt like this before, like he’s fucking flying.

She breaks it off first, flushed and breathless.

“I think I was waiting for you tonight,” she says, the words tumbling together. “I was—I wanted to see you again.”

“I know.”

“I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how I—I don’t even _know_ you.”

He cups her cheeks in his palms. “I know.”

She laughs, and he can see the tears starting to well at the corners of her eyes.

“You need to leave,” she whispers.

“He’s going to come looking for you?”

“No, it’s not that.” She shakes her head, eyes wide and serious. “You need to get out of the city, get back to Berlin. Whatever it is that’s happened here tonight, you need to leave it behind and go home.”

_Berlin’s no safer_ , he wants to say. _Not for me._

“Yeah,” he says, instead. “I should.”

“Would it be odd,” she says, biting her lip, “if I were to ask for your phone number?”

At that, he actually does laugh. “Please do. That way, I won’t have to track you down.”

She smiles. “You were going to track me down?”

“Of course,” he says, and he’s never meant anything more.

 

* * *

 

He boards the train back to Berlin at dawn, Kala’s contact information saved into his phone. He watches Paris recede into the distance in the ever-mounting light, the memory of Kala’s lips beneath his still tangible, vivid in his mind. He waits until he can’t stand it any longer, and then he pulls out his phone.

He’s well-versed in how to flatter women. But that’s not what he wants to do. This isn’t some pleasant encounter at the club.

This is something more. He has to be honest.

_I think I might miss you_ , he types, hitting send before he can overthink it.

His phone buzzes almost immediately.

_I can't explain why, but I think I might miss you too._

The sun breaks out over the treeline, sharp and bright. Wolfgang smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Well this was a fun change of pace!
> 
> [leralynne](http://leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to come say hi :)


End file.
